St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

the bottom of her bowl with a tortilla. Then he settled back to enjoy the last swallows of his beer.
    “You don’t ever need to call your chili second-best,” she said, leaning back with a satisfied sigh.
    “Is this where I tell you Mom gave me the recipe?”
    “That’s what I figured.” Carly sipped a little more beer. “When did you figure out that the Senator’s daughter was your grandmother?”
    His eyelids lowered slightly. “I always knew. Just like everyone else in the town.”
    “Including the Sandovals who jumped you?”
    Dan shrugged.
    “Does Winifred know?” Carly asked.
    “She never said anything one way or the other.”
    “Did you ask?”
    “No.”
    “Why not? You obviously like her.”
    Dan spun the clear beer bottle between his hands. “I didn’t care. I still don’t.”
    “She’s your blood relative.”
    “We’re hardly close enough to be shirttail cousins.”
    “But—”
    He kept on talking. “Winifred’s sister’s legally disowned daughter is my mother’s mother,” he said sardonically. “Yippee-do. Talk about a close relative. I’ll have to be sure and turn up at the family barbecue.”
    “What about your grandfather?”
    “Which one?”
    “Is John related to the Quintrells or the Castillos?”
    “No. He’s from Idaho.”
    “Right.” Carly glanced at Dan. He looked bored and irritated in equal parts, but at least he was answering her questions. “Who is your maternal grandfather?”
    “I don’t know. My grandmother never married anyone.”
    “What about on your mother’s birth certificate? Who was listed as father?”
    “No one.”
    Carly drank a swallow of beer. “What does local gossip say?”
    Dan’s eyes narrowed to green slits. “That she was a junkie and a slut who started screwing around at thirteen and got knocked up when she was fifteen.”
    Carly winced but kept on asking questions. She told herself that she needed to know about the people of the area before she could do justice to Winifred’s family history. And she knew she was lying to herself. Sure, local history would be helpful, but it was a need to know Dan’s personal history that was driving her.
    “No particular boyfriend?” she asked.
    “Three of the Sandoval brothers. If you believe what the boys yelled at me before they jumped me, she liked more than one at a time. Or maybe she was too whacked out to care how many climbed on.”
    Carly swallowed hard. “Why would young boys know about something that happened to your grandmother?”
    “The smaller the town, the longer the memory.” When Carly started to ask another question, Dan cut her off. “My turn. Tell me about your parents.”
    She looked at the line of foam sliding down the inside of the beer bottle. When people asked about her family, she usually said something meaningless and changed the subject. But she couldn’t. Not now. Dan wasn’t just anyone, and he hadn’t liked talking about his family any more than she was eager to talk about her lack of family. If she was going to see where their mutual attraction led, she’d have to do some sharing of her own.
    “I don’t know anything about my biological parents,” she said after a moment. “The couple who adopted me, Glenn and Martha May, were fifty-five and forty-eight when I came into their lives.”
    Dan’s eyes narrowed again. “How old were you?”
    “I think I was taken immediately from my birth mother. My parents never said.”
    “And you never asked?”
    “Oh, I asked. They said it didn’t matter, I was way too young to know what was going on at the time, my home was with them, they loved me.” She shrugged. “The usual things adopted children hear when the adoptive parents don’t want to talk about it.”
    “Was it a formal adoption, through a licensed agency?”
    “No. That’s why the records stayed sealed even after I turned twenty-one.”
    Dan nodded. From what he’d seen of Carly, she wouldn’t have taken her parents’ reluctance about details as the final word. She would have pursued it on her own. And she had.
    “Blank wall?” he asked.
    “Completely.” She grimaced. “Don’t get me wrong. My curiosity about my biological parents wasn’t a slam at Martha and Glenn. They loved me as much as any parents could.”
    “How about you? Did you love them?”
    Carly looked surprised. “Of course. They were kind, careful to introduce me to a wide range of experiences, and committed to my education. As I got older, they taught me